Trump Continues His Assault On Transgender Rights

The Trump regime launched at least three attacks on transgender rights this week including a new proposal unveiled this morning that would roll back regulations intended to prevent discrimination in health care.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a draft proposal this morning that would remove transgender individuals from regulations that prevent discrimination based on "sex."

The 204-page proposal released Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services would change the way discrimination “on the basis of sex” is defined. Instead of stating that this includes transgender patients or abortion-related care, the term “sex” would be open to interpretation — thus removing those explicit protections.

These assaults on transgender rights, particularly the effort to block transgender people from accessing homeless shelters, will absolutely lead to the deaths of transgender Americans if they become law. Moreover, I think we can reasonably state that the cruelty is the point.

Republicans want transgender people to die.

These narrow readings of the law which are literally predicated on the obvious meaning of a single word are not serious legal opinions. This is a regime using whatever means it has to enable discrimination and force certain Americans to remain in the shadows or out of public life.

If you are someone who believes in the Constitution or at least the Fourteenth Amendment which states that we're entitled to "equal protection under the law," enabling discrimination in publicly-funded programs has to be unconstitutional.

It remains to be seen if the Supreme Court sees it that way, but no one should hold their breath.

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Dear lord. Clarence Thomas is at it again. Having failed, IMO, at demonizing late term abortions as “infanticide” ( see all the women coming forward to tell of their tragic experiences with wanted pregnancies that have gone horribly
wrong ) the Alt Right, Handmaid’s Tale Court is now focusing on early term abortions that women seek for the ‘wrong’ reasons. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has a piece on an Indiana case and it shows where the Court might be trying to go in the future.
The case in question involves an Indiana law that banned “abortions in cases where the doctor knows that the woman’s sole reason for seeking the procedure was due to the fetus’ race, sex or disability.” Thomas, of course, went to town on this preposterous “eugenics” theory of the motives behind the development of contraceptives and the “disparate impact” on the black community of a higher percentage of black women seeking early term abortions than white women. Question for the gop. So which race is it that is ‘threatened’ with ‘extinction’? Black or white? Apparently, according to Thomas, ….both. At the same time. And all because of ‘liberal’ policies.
What is truly ridiculous about this proposition is that it ignores so much of the real world. If more black women are seeking abortions does he really think that the reason for the abortion is racial bigotry? Or that a law requiring a doctor to try to ascertain whether the black woman’s motive in seeking an early term abortion has to do with “race, sex or disability” is somehow going make black or white women choose to suffer the disruption and risk to their lives of child birth when an unwanted pregnancy happens? Has it never occurred to him that perhaps the disparity in percentage has more to do with access to affordable and readily available medical services and contraception in their particular state? (See Affordable Care Act and Hobby Lobby case.) What’s more, Thomas actually is validating the idea of ‘eugenics’. That there is such a thing in science. There is not. We are one race. The human race. We are a mix of DNA’s from all over the world.
Thomas, before writing such awful drivel, might want to check out the program Finding Your Roots with Professor Louis Gates, Jr. He estimates that the average African American has genetic European ancestry of about 24%. And that is the average. Gates himself has majority European genetic ancestry. So what are you talking about when one talks about ‘eugenics’. It is a now discredited idea from an era of ignorance purporting that humans, due to outward features, have some kind of genetic ‘purity’ with one outward kind of outward appearance being ‘superior’ to another. It is patently not true and in terms of actual science ( see reality) a totally preposterous idea. All humans are a mix of other humans. Thomas actually embraces the ‘idea’ of eugenics as true and as a valid reason to make women have children whether they want to or not. Using the long ago discredited ‘idea’ of eugenics, Thomas inflicts the state into the personal life decisions of women and the private doctor/patient relationship. That Margret Sanger used whatever selling point current to the time that she could to convince her society to allow women, black and white, to have a choice in whether they conceive or not is hardly the reason women avail themselves of the contraception that Margret Sanger fought her whole life to make available to them. The decision, ultimately, is a private and personal one. Not a societal one.
This is how bad the Court has gotten under the gop court packing plan. God help the Republic. Especially the women.

muselet

Cruelty is always the point when Rs take aim at vulnerable populations, especially when sex and gender are involved.